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Phoenix

As the executive director of an organization working to increase entrepreneurship in inner-city communities, Oye Waddell sees many obstacles - as well as assets - for hungry entrepreneurs.
One issue is childcare.
“One of the issues we’ve seen in the past is that many women would like to come to the training and want to develop, but they don’t have access to childcare,” said Waddell, who runs Hustle PHX, which works in areas with high-unemployment rates and minority communities. “If their ... Read More

By Kristi Eaton
Edgar Olivo earned his college degree in business communication. But during the recession he saw a new need. He started a training firm focusing on helping small businesses get off the ground. He began working with cities around Phoenix to offer economic development-type programming.
During that time working with small business owners, he recognized there was little to no support for the Spanish-speaking community, so he started his own firm, Compass CBS, in 2011. Compass ... Read More

Christine Mackay remembers the day that was Phoenix’ rise-and-shine moment.
It was Super Bowl 2015, and Phoenix was hosting. She’d been in office as community and economic development director since August 2014, having moved from the economic development director job in Chandler, Arizona.
The game drew more than 250,000 residents of greater Phoenix to a downtown that had transformed. For some, it was their first time in the central city in a decade.
“The very next weekend,” Mackay ... Read More

When Rise of the Rest founder Steve Case set out on a bus tour to find startups to fund in Albuquerque and Phoenix this fall, he wanted to find “great opportunities for inclusive entrepreneurship.”
He wanted to break the cycle of startup capital going to “the same kinds of people for the same kinds of ideas,” he says. “Everyone deserves a shot at the American dream.”
The AOL co-founder gave $100,000 to the winner of a pitch competition in each city along the tour, which also included ... Read More

A Phoenix-based start up is partnering with the University of Arizona to develop and implement a program that will improve efficiency times for first responders.
Integrating already existing resources, VIJILIS and UA’s Engineering Design Program are developing a mobile platform to identify and confirm first responders are in an area and ready, willing and able to respond in the event of an emergency.
The new technology will feature sensors for human-to-resource proximity, live GPS-based ... Read More

The Bay Area’s high cost of living has made some tech companies add satellite operations in Phoenix and other "cost effective" cities in the Southwest.
Between 2010 and 2015, the technology sectors in Austin, Phoenix, Dallas all experienced double-digit job growth as Uber, Yelp, Weebly and other companies originally from Silicon Valley opened up additional offices to better accommodate employee growth.
From the New York Times:
At the end of last year in the Bay Area mega-region — ... Read More

Phoenix, "one of the Top 5 growth markets for tech in the U.S.," is fast becoming a 'paradise' for the high-tech car industry.
A recent story in Fortune notes that Chandler (one of the 23 cities in the Phoenix metropolitan area) will be the next hub for testing and developing Google's self-driving test cars. It's also one of GM's four IT centers responsible for inventing global software systems. The Chandler center has 900 employees, "roughly 40% of whom graduated from college within ... Read More

He’s here to listen. If you have a vision, and you think you can make it happen, tech pioneer Steve Case is ready to hear how two Silicon66 cities – Albuquerque and Phoenix – are developing an edge in problem-solving and innovation.
The co-founder of AOL is bringing the fifth Rise of the Rest startup bus tour to the Southwest because he believes any entrepreneur anywhere can create opportunities. But it’s really the ecosystems producing innovation that fascinate Case, who is chairman and CEO ... Read More

Think innovative companies can happen anywhere – even if they’re not in Silicon Valley or on the East Coast? Investor and tech pioneer Steve Case does, too.
That’s why he’s bringing the Rise of the Rest startup tour to two Silicon 66 cities: Albuquerque and Phoenix.
Case comes to town ready to invest $500,000 in regional startups as part of the fifth Rise of the Rest road trip, which hits Omaha/Lincoln on Oct. 3, Denver on Oct. 4, Salt Lake City on Oct. 5, Albuquerque on Oct. 6 and ... Read More

Phoenix-based IO Data Centers, the second largest private data center company in the world, is planning to expand its campus there with a three-story data center located adjacent to its existing Phoenix facility. Expected to open sometime in 2017, the center is slated to cost between $400 million and $500 million over the next six to eight years as a result of the cost of center equipment. IO stores data for clients such as CBS Interactive and Goldman Sachs, using patented, secure data storage ... Read More